virgin media SMT2100C box, how old?

spinningsheep

I had Virgin media installed last wednesday and they installed a Samsung SMT2110C, this died by Saturday, no power to it at all, so they sent an engineer out on bank holiday monday, and he installled a larger replacement box, an SMT2100C, I was a bit surprised that the install menu all came up with NTL, but he assured me it was a brand new box, despite being in a plain brown one, no mention of Virgin, and the softare was more stable, as they had used these boxes just prior to them changing to Virgin from NTL, but having looked online, there are quite a few of these for sale and classed as "old boxes" so, was it a new box and do I have an OLD box that really should be replaced? Any help appreciated.

Nilrem

VM use the same general range of boxes as NTL and Telewest did (I think they are very slowly phasing out the Pace boxes), so they will supply any of the Samsung models.

As they don't sell you the box, you are renting it (so don't sell it if you cancel or you may face a hefty fee), they collect and refurbish boxes from customers who cancel, or when a box is faulty.
As such when the engineers install, or replace a box it's pot luck what you'll get depending on what's on his van at the time (I think they are trying to avoid using pace boxes, certainly when replacing a Samsung one), and there is no way of telling if the boxes they are installing are new, or refurbished.
In theory the refurb boxes should be just as good as the "new" ones, as they should have been fully tested after being returned to the service centre (possibly tested more thoroughly than when they left the factory originally).

As to the NTL software, I think that's normal as the boxes get updates for the firmware as part of the bootup process, and depending on which part of the network you're on you may need different firmware (when they roll out updates I beleive they do it one area at a time), so the "default" software/firmware is a fairly old one to allow for that.

Basically, any box VM install should be "current", and many of the differences between say the Samsung 2110C and 2100C will be largely cosmetic (IIRC the 2110 is smaller), but not functional.

If you'd had it replaced with a Pace box it might have been different, as they are much older designs than the Samsung ones (and inferior imo).

richardc1983

Samsung boxes are the same albeit a little cosmetic difference, what is stated above is 100% correct.

ITs purely a slightly diff model number.